Trying retro recipes so you don't have to!

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There’s a reason why some flavour combinations which, at first glance, seem odd have survived the 1970’s and others died a timely, natural and not particularly sad death (devils on horseback being a perfect example of a plucky survivor – yum!). Bananas, ham, mustard and hollandaise sauce is not a combination that quickly comes to mind and I am pretty sure I have never heard anyone say “I remember an amazing cooked banana and ham dish from my childhood that I MUST recreate”. We set out to find out why.

A few people had sent the idea to us (thank you) and we found the full recipe on a vintage food cards site. There it sat, in all its yellowy glory.

Credit: vintagerecipecards.com

The recipe was one of the easiest we have ever had to make with only five ingredients. In keeping with the retro theme of including as many instant/ tinned ingredients as possible the hollandaise sauce specified was a packet mix. We then just needed bananas, ham, lemon juice and mustard. The mustard was smeared on the ham slices. The lemon juice was sprinkled on the bananas and then the mustardy ham was wrapped around the bananas. The result was baked. The hollandaise sauce was made and poured over and the end result was then baked again for 5 minutes.

I am a huge fan of unexpected fruit/ meat combinations and was really looking forward to this one. The smell of cooking banana filled the house and with great anticipation we pulled it out, dressed it up with some retro accompaniments and served it up.

It didn’t look all that appetising. Despite careful application of lemon juice (both the specified sprinkling AND brushing to ensure even coverage) some of the bananas looked a bit, well, crap. The rest of the bananas shone with a lemony gleam, the ham curled up slightly and the mustard lurked under the surface – unseen but prepared to torpedo your tastebuds. We sliced it up and tucked in anyway.

The result? It wasn’t that bad. There was plenty left over but there were a few surprised noises of appreciation. Probably the worst bit was when you got too much mustard and banana together in a mouthful but other than that it was… ok. On this blog that’s a ringing endorsement.

If you close your eyes and imagine a Christmas pudding you probably think of warmth, brandy, plump sultanas peeking out from between folds of glistening pudding. So now take the warmth and the glistening pudding and replace it with gelatinous wobbly jelly… and you have Christmas pudding, Bad Jelly style.

The recipe is that you take a bunch of stuff that probably shouldn’t be cooked, then you cook it, then you mix it with some sherry and some gelatine and leave it to set. The smell while it is setting is horrible. It’s so hard to describe except to say it’s the smell of something that shouldn’t be cold, quietly being cold and resenting it.

“Decanting” was so hard and we ended up dropping it from a height on to a breadboard, so the photos below look slightly worse for wear.

Yes, those are bananas

We looked at the bad jelly. The bad jelly wobbled slightly and dared us to taste it.

“The subtle flavour of avocado seems to be retained quite well in cooked desserts…”

So the challenge for this post is going to be to write about a meringue with an oozy green centre and not use the word “snot”. Here goes.

When we decided that it was time to finish up avocado month (because none of us could stand avocado anymore) then the obvious recipe to finish on was a dessert. And when it came to dessert we were spoilt for choice – starting our browsing at a lush green “Tropical Crème Caramel”, meandering past “Banavo crepes” and “Creamed Avocado Puffs” and finally settling on the Almondine Avocado Meringue.

What sold us on the meringue was that it seemed like a last ditch attempt on the part of the author to fill the dessert section. You can imagine this poor woman desperately searching for an avocado recipe that’s not too obviously a prank on humanity and then just thinking “Fuck it, everyone likes meringue, just stick it in a meringue.” I bet she was as sick of avocado as we are.

To make it you basically make two meringues (thanks Emma and Rose) and then put cream and avocado in the middle. To make it real fancy then pipe a bit of chocolate and sprinkle some almonds on the top, like so:

And in its green gooey goodness in a gratuitous close up:

Then just find a willing victim and serve up a slice:

After bracing ourselves for inevitable disappointment, the taste test bit of this was actually not too bad. We did all find ourselves trying to scrape the avocado off the meringue and just eat meringue and cream, so the verdict (like most of the recipes in avocado “month”) is “Not bad, would have been better without the avocado.”

To think we originally skipped past this one in favour of avocado desserts (if only we did – I can just hear Cher now “If I could turn back time”).

Having read the title and seen the recipe, you probably have a few questions – “What is it stuffed with?”, “What is it coated in?”, “Oh wow, please tell me the skin has been removed!?” Or perhaps you are a little more like Bridget “Um…. what is that thing? It looks like a weird animal………”

Rest assured, I can confidently reveal that is it not some weird animal – it is crusty stuffed avocado!

The filling is stuffed with a mixture of Camembert cheese, garlic, fresh herbs (not actually specifying which herbs; we opted for chives and parsley, but let’s face it, it wouldn’t have mattered what we used) dash of Tabasco, lemon juice and pepper.

We didn’t have quite enough canola oil and couldn’t be arsed running back to the shops so we decided to “wing it” and combine a mixture of canola, grape-seed and olive oils (basically every neutral flavoured oil we had) And while I know it’s generally not recommended to use olive oil for deep frying, it was only a little bit, what difference would it really make? What would it matter?

Quite a lot as it turns out. The different smoke points definitely made getting the temperature right a challenge **, but after about 30 mins, a bit of smoke, a loaf of crusty bread (to help determine temp) and a bottle of wine later (no explanation needed), we were ready to go!

After frying, then baking for an additional 15 minutes, and topping with an Almond Butter Sauce, it was time to dish up…

And then break in for the taste test…

The conversation around the dinner table went something like this:

Alister – “What is that?”

Emma – “Crusty Stuffed Avocado!”

Alister – “What is it stuffed with?”

Sarah – “Cheese, garlic and fresh herbs “

Alister – “Sounds nice”

Sarah – “Hmmmmm……… Maybe……” (doubtful look on face)

Emma – “Bridge, how does the filling taste?”

Bridget – “Like cheese”

Sarah – “Is it nice?”

Bridget – “Ummmmmm…… Not particularly” (disgusted look on face)

Anthony – “Part of my brain says it’s not that bad, the other part says I’m going to throw up”

The warm, mushy, bitterness of the cooked Avocado was, simply put, not good!

The recipe says serves 2. We found it struggled to serve 5

* If any one is attempting to try this at home, and we recommend you don’t, but if you do, I would definitely encourage removing the skin before putting it back together. It would be so, so much easier

** Thank you to MasterChef for teaching me to always have a back up (believe it or not what we dished up was our second attempt). Crusty avocado would have been a whole lot crustier otherwise!

True statement. It is difficult to imagine natural green desserts, even after you’ve seen the recipe and whipped up the green “Sour Cream Avodamia Pie”. In fact even when you are sitting in front of it willing yourself to taste it.

The pie started off well, a sugary, buttery crust packed with crushed macadamia nuts, and then went downhill from there. The pie filling is set with gelatine and there is a very small window between the avocado remaining green and the pie being set.

Too soon and it’s a good green colour (tough to write this with a straight face) but the filling is sort of sloppy:

But then if you wait a bit longer then it is set but goes a disconcerting browny green colour:

It tasted ok, sort of like avocado mashed up with sugar and spooned in to a pie base. Maybe it would be ok with some ice-cream, cream and no other options.

I can’t tell you how excited I was to discover the Avocado Meatza. This was everything that I had been hoping for in retro cooking – meat, cheese, bacon and a healthy dose of weird.

The meatza was featured in a Bon Appetit article about the joys of cooking with convenience foods or, as Bon Appetit likes to call them, “those magic packets and cans“. And this is where the difficulty lay in making the meatza. There were two key ingredients that (despite searching through and around all those ridiculous fresh vegetables) I couldn’t find. One was instant minced onion and the other was condensed cheddar cheese soup.

A search online opened my eyes to an incredible injustice. Campbells Cheddar Cheese Soup, while readily available in the US, hasn’t made it to little old Australia. Muttering to myself and mentally writing letters to Campbells, we made it from scratch. The result probably wasn’t as condensed as it could have been but it tasted ok and I thought bacon would probably float on it. You know your cooking has taken strange and disconcerting path when you are judging your food by how well bacon will float.

So to make the meatza, make a little bed of baked meat, carefully pour in your cheese soup, float on the avocado and bacon, perch cherry tomatoes at a slightly rakish angle and then bake.

It didn’t turn out completely as planned. The avocado went a bit brown, the bacon did sink a bit and the meat wasn’t completely cooked through.

Here’s the scary thing though. It didn’t taste that bad (although Emma hated it). Sort of like a McDonalds Cheese Burger on the way home after a big night. That said, I am pretty sure I wouldn’t make it again (or if I did I would pull down the blinds, not tell anyone, gorge in meaty cheesy craziness and pretend it never happened).

The Date Avocado Tango marks the start of Avocado month (which may take longer than a month, depends how long it takes to get through all these Avocado recipes). Probably the first thing you thought of when I mentioned avocado month is “that’s all well and good but I hope there’s some awesome avocado desserts, that’s where avocado really comes in to its own”.

And it’s exactly that question that led us straight to the dessert section of the Complete Avocado Cookbook. And then straight to the Date Avocado Tango.

“This dish is similar to a mousse, but with more goodies”

A short summary of Date Avocado Tango is dates, avocado, cream, honey and egg whites mixed together, whipped a bit and then put in a glass with cream on top.

At this stage in the bad jelly experiment we realised that tasting order is important in any dish served in a glass. Unfortunately after I tasted then the super excited four year old snuck in, took a big spoonful and then spat it back in the glass. No-one was that keen on tasting after that, even after I (rather kindly) spooned out the spit. So, it’s reliant on me to tell you that it tasted not unpleasant but just slightly odd. There’s a reason why avocado and date is not a classic combination.

PS – Thank you to Lou for giving me “The Complete Avocado Cookbook”. For the sake of our working relationship I will assume you were being nice.

PPS – To go completely off topic, after checking the google search terms that led people to this site, a quick shout out to the confused young man who searched for “how to pot ham in my penis” and arrived at this blog. I am sure you didn’t find what you were looking for, here’s hoping one day someone will sit you down for a chat about what your penis is used for.